How to Read Japanese

Discovering how to read Japanese is important for anyone learning the Japanese language. When you see that totally unknown script in front of you, you may feel overwhelmed or doubtful. You may think, “There is no way that I can master Japanese” or “I just cannot read Japanese.”

These thoughts are completely normal, but don’t worry – it is definitely possible for you to master Japanese reading.

In this article, we’ll share some tips to help you learn to read in Japanese. These tips are meant for beginning learners, but they will also be helpful for anyone who is having difficulty reading Japanese.

Tip 1: Know the three scripts

You may already know that Japanese uses three basic scripts – hiragana, katakana and kanji. Romaji is also used in some cases. Let’s look at each of these to get a better understanding of Japanese writing systems. We’ll discuss their advantages and disadvantages, which one you should learn first, and where to focus your efforts.

Hiragana

Hiragana should be the first script you learn.

Hiragana consists of 46 basic characters, each consisting of one syllable. It is theoretically possible to write the entire Japanese language in hiragana since it can express all of the sounds in the language. However, hiragana is usually used only for adjectives, particles, and verb endings, as well as for several words that do not appear in the katakana or _kanji_scripts.

Hiragana is the first writing system taught to Japanese children. Therefore, the majority of children's books are written only in hiragana.

Katakana

Katakana is also based on syllables. The characters of katakana represent the exact same sounds as hiragana. You might be asking yourself, “Why do we need an entire set of katakana if the sounds are the same?” The answer is that katakana is used for words of foreign origin, also called ‘loan words.

Katakana is almost like a simplified version of hiragana. When you look at the katakana characters alongside the hiragana characters, you may notice that some characters are very similar in shape, while others are completely different. Generally speaking, katakana characters have no curvy strokes, which is also true of hiragana, and katakana characters have fewer strokes overall.

Kanji & furigana

Kanji are Chinese characters that were adopted into the Japanese writing system. While hiragana and katakana are just phonetic characters representing specific sounds, kanji are ideograms, meaning they have specific meanings. Among the thousands of Kanji characters, about 2,000 are commonly used in daily writing.

Kanji can be a great help when it comes to understanding Japanese reading passages. There are a great number of homonyms in Japanese. Homonyms are words that have the exact same pronunciation but completely different meanings. Using kanji makes the meaning of homonyms clear, acting as a shortcut to understanding the context at a glance.

Besides making homonyms clearer, kanji dramatically improve the readability of a text by indicating the boundaries between words. In written Japanese, unlike in English, there is no space between words. As you can imagine, this can make reading Japanese difficult! However, sentences use a combination of hiragana and kanji to make this a bit easier.

In Japanese, all particles are written in hiragana. Verbs and adjectives are written partially with kanji, and most nouns are written in kanji. Therefore, when reading a long sentence, you will be able to quite literally see the boundaries between words by spotting the particles. With practice, you will quickly be able to understand a sentence simply by recognising these boundaries!

One feature that helps people learn to read kanji is furigana. Furigana are small letters, usually hiragana that appear above or beside a kanji character to describe how it should be pronounced. Furigana are used to help people read kanji properly, so they are very useful, especially for beginners.

Some Japanese language materials include furigana, so if you have a choice, getting the material with furigana will be a big help in learning to read kanji. Keep this option in mind!

Rōmaji

Rōmaji is the romanization of the Japanese language, meaning it uses the Latin alphabet to write Japanese. Rōmaji is necessary for native Japanese, as it is used to write or type on an English keyboard. Rōmaji can also be very useful as a starting point for helping you to understand Japanese characters, but there are some downsides that may slow down your learning progress.

One of the biggest problems is that you may not be able to learn proper pronunciation when you rely on rōmaji for too long. This is reason enough not to rely on rōmaji when learning to read in Japanese.

Another reason not to rely on rōmaji is that there are several romanization systems, such as Hepburn romanization, Nihon-shiki romanization, and Kunrei-shiki romanization. Since these systems are not standardized, using rōmaji can actually confuse you.

Tip 2: Incorporate vocabulary building and grammar learning with Japanese reading practice

It is almost impossible to master all the writing systems first before moving onto grammar learning or vocabulary building.

As soon as you start recognizing hiragana, it’s best to move on to learning vocabulary and grammar. As you progress, you can always go back to the hiragana or katakana chart to consolidate your reading skills.

As cliché as it may sound, patience and repetition are key. Don’t be discouraged at this point, as you may feel you are not making much progress. This stage of the learning journey is crucial and can seem impossible, but I can assure you that your learning skills will continue to progress. With a lot of determination from your end, you will reap the benefits of your patience.

Tip 3: Focus on phrases to understand the context better

Once you start getting familiar with some sentence patterns, you can start reading sentences.

One of the most effective ways to understand the context is to break down the sentences into the bunsetsu (文節), the smallest meaningful components of a Japanese sentence. If you understand each segment of bunsetsu (文節), you can put those meanings together to get the meaning of the whole sentence.

Why do we need to break down the sentences into segments of bunsetsu (文節)? It’s because of the characteristics of the Japanese language.

In English, the word order is relatively fixed. However, Japanese is much more flexible, making it rather difficult to comprehend the meaning from just the word order.

English relies heavily on its fixed word order to convey meaning – the slots for subject and objects are basically unmovable – but Japanese relies on particles to specify the function of each noun or noun phrase.

In most cases, you can divide a sentence into segments where the words are marked with particles. In Japanese these small words play such an important role. Thanks to particles, sentences can make sense even though you may not have any information from word order to help express the meaning.

For a more detailed discussion of how this works, check out our article on Japanese particles.

Frequently asked questions

Now that you have some ideas on how to learn to read Japanese, we’ll address some common questions about reading Japanese.

Is Japanese read right to left?

The Japanese language is written in vertical columns, with the columns being read right to left and top to bottom. This traditional style of writing is called tategaki (縦書き), which means ‘vertical writing,’ as tate (縦) means ‘vertical’ and kaki or gaki means ‘writing.’ This is the complete opposite of English, which is read from left to right.

Can you explain how to read Japanese manga?

Manga story scripts are also read from right to left and from top to bottom, the same way as other Japanese writing.

In contrast, English comic books are read left to right, which is the same way that words flow in the English language. To be more precise, each page of an English comic is read in a ‘z-like’ pattern, left to right and top to bottom.

In manga though, the panels on each page should follow exactly the opposite of the ‘z-like’ pattern, from right to left, then down to the right again. Dialogue boxes or bubbles within each panel also flow in the same direction.

Simply explaining how to read may actually be more complicated than looking at the pages of manga and trying it out yourself. If you have access to manga, why not give it a try? Once you get started, you may find it hard to resist!

Check out our article on how to learn Japanese with manga!

Wrapping up

Learning to read Japanese definitely takes time and repetition. It cannot be guaranteed that you will learn all you need in a matter of a few steps. The most important thing is your perseverance and dedication to understanding and practicing the language.

Imagine the satisfaction of finally being able to read in Japanese, a language which was once an entirely unknown mixture of characters!

Be kind to yourself, and at the same time don’t stop learning!